I am currently working on my marketing strategy for my company, NLB Travel, which arranges guided tours of the sights in Italy.

The target market is the affluent, middle-class, well educated individual, aged 35-55, interested in history, culture, art, religion etc. and who would be interested in travelling to Italy.

I am contacting the low-cost airlines and travel agents and will also be doing some form of internet marketing, but I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas about where this type of clientele go and what they read etc. I have advertised in The Guardian and Observer and am looking at all the broadsheets and I am in contact with the Italian Tourist Board and will soon be targetting language schools.

I had a meeting with Lastminute.com yesterday which went well and I am also looking at advertising in the Time Out guide books for Italy.

Does anyone have any good ideas about where/how to market?
A good story for a press release?
Someone/something famous to do with Italian that I could use to generate publicity?

My dad recently went on an arranged tour to italy via various different places he ended up in the riviera. he said it had its ups and downs but generally the places he saw (rather than the accomodation) were beautiful. He booked his through thompson with their young at heart brochure. Have you tried to contact the bigger firms?
Magazines would probably be your besat target such as Womans Weekly or Best as ladies of all ages read these and have a way to persuade their husbands!
Or alternatively Gardeners mags older gen of 35+ read them!
Best Of Luck

Hope your okay. Just to let you know ive come across a site called www.pressbox.co.uk, you can submit your press releases for free.

They don't always accept them as ive been writing one to two a week but ive just had an email saying that my latest press release has been accepted and its on the net. They claim journalists read it all the time. I dont know but as its free you can give it a go.

Also check out www.completlyfreeresources.com they have loads of other info on sites you may which to work your way through especially as i know you deal a lot with America

Actually believe it or not. I haven't worked all day . Ive been in West End shopping but then i went into all the lingerie shops.
Assesing and researching. Also dreaming that one day how im going to have my shop.

Ive decided a mix between La Senza and the lingerie dept in Selfridges!!! Call you in the week

i think on the BBC website i sae something about a new series starting called Rome - about ancient Rome....maybe you could try and see if you can get any exposure relating to that - as there will be an audience watching it all interested in Italy -

The best approach is to send your press release to journalist directly. Free sites, or sites that only distribute to a list of opt-in journalists, are unlikely to reach the exact journalists you are trying to target. And beware of distributors that use a scatter-gun approach, sending your release to thousands of journalists. If it's not relevant news to the individual journalists, it's considered spam!

Points to bear in mind if you're choosing a press release service;
- Ensure they're strong on editorial and vet every release. If your copy has mistakes or is written in the wrong structure/format, journalists will simply bin it.
- That they send releases directly and individually addressed to each journalist, and that the release appears to have come from you (so you're establishing your own relationships with journalists). In the US, distribution is predominantly by newswires but this isn't the case in the UK.
- That your news is syndicated to news aggregators and online news sites, such as Google News, Yahoo! News, etc. This helps with links to your site and wider distribution. It also means people can find your release via key word searches on major search engines.
- That the press list covers freelance journalists.